Friday, 27 November 2015

Uvi Falcon overview with video and post

Finally here we are with the first overview so long delayed!!
As a surprise we're starting with a brand new software still not named before :-)
Nevertheless starting from the next one I'll proceed to review all the others as well.
I hope guys this is going to be useful for you.

Bear with me if my English pronunciation is kinda weird and I throwed in
a bunch of errors maybe :-) it's surely meant to be improved with
time,so thanks for understanding.

Uvi Falcon - hybrid instrument

Available for Mac and Windows computer as stand-alone, VST, AU, AAX, it's mix of a powerful multi sample format playback engine and a brilliant virtual synthesizer bringing you several kind of audio synthesis, a terrific warehouse of high quality effects, a multipart mixer with up to 17 pairs of stereo outputs, a performance machine, all in one package and much more.

The audio quality of Falcon is awesome, fitting many kind of music and sound productions
Suits perfectly both the simple user, willing to play straight out of the box, just loading one of the many factory presets based on a large library of samples and synths patches included, and the creativity of professional sound designers which, once learned its interface, will surely find it's a real powerhouse, fun and challenging to use and experiment with.
It truly can blow the house down with its programs where synthesis and samples come together.
Being a UVI product is fully compatible with all the previously released UVI libraries for Uvi Workstation and UVI powered instruments.
Nevertheless Falcon has the ability to load and manipulate tons of other audio formats as Soundbanks (.ufs), AIFF, FLAC, MP3, MP4 , REX1, REX2, SDII (on Mac), WAV, WAV64, SFZ, SND, CA.

After a smooth installation process of the software and its factory library Falcon shows up with a minimal resizable interface divided in 3 main sections.

On the left side we find a TREE VIEW where if needed users and sound designers can get into details when it's needed to visually dig inside the structure of a program, looking for and select a specific option.

That's pretty handy when a specific part is made of several layers of sound engines, modulations, effects, envelopes, parameters connected to other parameters, sounds assigned to specific part of the keyboard, and so on.

At the center the main edit window brings several tab:
The INFO area where we can find the simple interface with available, if any, some specific knobs and switches controlling sound parameters assigned by the sound designer or by ourselves.
With those we can tweak each patch in an easy way while performing, without being confused by looking at all the program knobs available at the same time.
The EDIT section with all our well known audio parameters, is where we are truly building a patch, adding oscillators and/or sample playing and mangling enginges, envelopes, lfo, filters, effects, additional modulations, arpeggiators, step sequencers and much more.
The EFFECTS section in which are visually duplicated the effects we may have added in the edit tab, showed here in a more accessible way for further editing.
The EVENT section, it's our workarea when using a midi player, arpeggiators, for working with tuning and micro tuning options, scales and microscales, loading prebuilt ones or editing custom tunings.
The MODS section gives easier access to program and edit all the modulations we're having active in the edit window on a give parameter.
Finally the BROWSER on the right side allows us browsing our computer hard disks and folders to find and load sample libraries such the uvi ones. if we've already bought some of them, as well as quickly surf through the Falcon Factory library, selecting our patches or inside the factory resources what we need when building from scratch a program.
As a virtual synthesizer Falcon offers several kind of audio synthesis, all available to be used even at the same time, even on a single patch.
The related oscillators are as many as 15 different ones collected under different groups.

As sample libraries editor and player the internal Falcon engines bring you high quality time stretching, scrub, granular and multigranular playback, based on the IRCAM first class audio algorythms.

Theres even a so called Slice oscillator useful for Drum Loops which when loaded will be split automatically in our selected keyboard range zone.
Besides that we're having all the other professional options available in high end sample player such as round robin, keysplits, keyswitches and others.
Usually one can use only some of these ways of creating and manipulating sounds in other synths and sample players, rarely all at the same time and on a single preset while instead Falcon allows!

These in fact can be combined together to give birth to incredible and pretty deep creations making it a sound designer's heaven, right in the same patch and played in a single keyboard assigning them to single key or keyzones.
While building up things Falcon modularity aspect allows us to modulate and submodulate practically speaking anything available, as we said already.

For this purpouse you'll find on Falcon LFO and Envelopes of any kind, actually 8 modulators: AHD, Analog ADSR, Attack Decay, DAHDSR, a weird one called Drunk, an army of different Multi Envelopes and Step Envelopes with a huge list of pre-made ones
Plus a Step sequencer and a very deep Arpeggiator.

Adding, tweaking, moving things around is just one click away, simply dragging and dropping them from the browser on the right to the edit window.
Modulating and assigning things can be easily done also right clicking over a chosen parameter.
This scenario happens when we need to build up a front end user interface making chosen knobs and switches available over the info tab, our instrument user interface on Falcon, we're doing this thanks to macros.
Macros are assignable to whatever we want, just right clicking over something in the edit view and chosing "assign macro - add new macro". This will then show up in the user interface.

On Falcon we're having available 80 high quality audio effects too, of anykind, included the well known Uvi SPARKVERB and the REDUX effect too.

Each effect offers some presets as starting point which then can be absolutely customized for our needs and assigned to almost any sound or group of sounds.
The effects in fact can be added at a layer level and/or to a whole patch.
It's possible to chain and save a set of custom configurated effects. This means you can build your own multieffect rack which you can save and reload anytime anywhere.
Understand anyway Falcon is able to handle piling of oscillators, sound engines, modulations, effects and samples playback as much as your CPU power will allow you.
I guess you start to figure out which kind of sound design and music performance power it gives you.

You may then ask yourself how is possible to organize all these signal flows , such a large amount of sounds, in a single instance and performance? Being Falcon a multitimbral instrument has a dedicate internal MIXER with up to 17 pairs of outputs available, with as many channel as the number of parts you're going to add and build in a single instance, all at the same time, having each one its dedicated volume fader, pan knob, insert effects, aux send, plus the obvious master section with its insert effect slots too
This means that practically speaking you can build an entire song internally and route it to your daw in separate channels for futher editing and midi playback capabilities.

There's the performance tab left.
The PERFORMANCE tab is where we make choices regarding anything useful for setting up a performance like chosing and assigning midi channels, keyboard zones, velocity splits, routing audio outputs. Important to note is the possibility of remoting and controlling Falcon using OSC compatible software and interfaces.

Finally using Falcon scripts and EVENT PROCESSING to manipulate sound and midi parameters or creating the user interface, thanks to its internal event processor with many prebuilt presets, its SCRIPT PROCESSOR, and the available LUA SCRIPTING LANGUAGE

will allow you to get deeper into sound processing and create any kind of instrument interface such as the Uvi libraries and powered instrument ones.
If you wonder which kind of music production and sound design Falcon suits better actually the answer is any.
Sky's the limit they say and I wonder why UVI was not using this line as slogan.
From loading and playing patches bringing you orchestral sample libraries to custom punk guitars sample, from ambient chill out, lounge, dirty electro, glitch polyrhythms , soundscapes, dubsteps, from jazzy night sessions to minimal electro or country music Falcon will be your friend for many years ahead.
Expect many brilliant sound designers to join the party and produce tons of stunning sound libraries and instruments for Falcon as much as you will probably do.

I hope I gave you a glimpse of what this brilliant piece of software is able to do.
Thanks for your time and I hope you'll be back around here for the next audio software overview.
Have fun and take care.
CheersDCSI - Diego